Heart valves are sometimes damaged by disease or by aging, resulting in problems with the proper functioning of the valve. Heart valve replacement has become a routine surgical procedure for patients suffering from valve dysfunctions. Traditional open surgery inflicts significant patient trauma and discomfort, requires extensive recuperation times, and may result in life-threatening complications.
To address these concerns, efforts have been made to perform cardiac valve replacements using minimally invasive techniques. In these methods, laparoscopic instruments are employed to make small openings through the patient's ribs to provide access to the heart. While considerable effort has been devoted to such techniques, widespread acceptance has been limited by the clinician's ability to access only certain regions of the heart using laparoscopic instruments.
Still other efforts have been focused upon percutaneous transcatheter delivery and implantation of replacement cardiac valves to solve the problems presented by traditional open surgery and minimally invasive surgical methods. In such methods, a stented prosthetic heart valve, also known generally as a valve prosthesis, is compacted for delivery in a catheter and then advanced, for example through an opening in the femoral artery, through the inferior vena cava, through the interatrial septum, where the stented prosthetic heart valve is then deployed in the annulus of the native heart valve.
Various types and configurations of stented prosthetic heart valves are available for percutaneous valve replacement procedures. In general, stented prosthetic heart valve designs attempt to replicate the function of the heart valve being replaced and thus will include valve leaflet-like structures. Stented prosthetic heart valves, also known as valve prostheses, are generally formed by attaching a bioprosthetic valve to a frame made of a wire or a network of wires. Such a stented prosthetic heart valve can be collapsed radially to introduce the stented prosthetic heart valve into the body of the patient percutaneously through a catheter. The stented prosthetic heart valve may be deployed by radially expanding it once positioned at the desired deployment site. If the deployed valve prosthesis is incorrectly positioned relative to the annulus of the native heart valve or migrates once radially expanded, serious complications may arise, including paravalvular leakage (PVL) or the requirement for placement of a permanent pacemaker. Mitral valve replacement is especially susceptible to stented prosthetic valve migration due to the native anatomy of the heart.
Accordingly, there is a need for systems and methods to more easily position and anchor a stented prosthetic heart valve in the annulus of a native heart valve.